Katrina Coverage

Speaking before a Senate panel, David Paulison, acting head of FEMA, says they're going to get new bids on $400 million worth of contracts:
"It sure looks, with hindsight, that FEMA would have been in a much better position if it had had a lot of contracts in place that had been bid that were standby […]

The NYT joins the re-writing fray with "Fear Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans".
Before reading that article, you might want to take a look at "FBI investigating NOPD corruption, phantom cops; $5k bonus" and "Mortician contradicts reports downplaying crime, Part 2". Both of those, er, "amplify" the NYT's reporting:
…It is still impossible to say if […]

From the NYT:
… Water began to retreat in the submerged low-lying bayou country of South Louisiana on Sunday, but anger welled as residents and officials of Terrebonne Parish, which includes Houma, began to survey the storm-surge damage. This is one place where Hurricane Rita was the worst recent storm; Hurricane Katrina brought only minimal wind […]

David E. Sanger of the New York Times gives us a peek inside his "Reporter's Notebook" and describes Bush's trip to Colorado and other locations to observe the response to Hurricane Rita. From "In This Storm, White House Tries to Take New Tack":
But unlike the events that have defined his presidency so far - the […]

Two bad tastes that deserve each other, the New York Times and Geraldo Rivera, were recently locked in a death spiral over an NYT report which claimed that Fox's least worthy reporter staged a rescue photo op. It's now been resolved, their Public Editor reports in "Even Geraldo Deserves a Fair Shake" (Another writeup here).
On […]

John Leo from 9/21:
Which politician emerged from the mess of Katrina as the biggest bonehead involved? No, it's not Michael Brown, George W. Bush, or even the bumbling Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
The clear winner is New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who made every conceivable mistake during the crisis. With plenty of warning, he delayed […]

From 9/21's "A Storm Survivor, Political Reputation Intact" by Joyce Purnick:
Hurricane Katrina has given the nation a new political celebrity, the mayor of beleaguered New Orleans. And like they say with pride here about most everything, Mayor C. Ray Nagin is just plain different…
Say what now?
…That kind of bravado is classic Nagin, an unorthodox politician […]

The NYT article "Police in Suburbs Blocked Evacuees, Witnesses Report" discusses the strange incidents on the Crescent City Connection, over which evacuees from New Orleans tried to get to promised safety in Gretna. See Gretna Police "trapped survivors in New Orleans" for the more trustworthy UPI version of events, and see "Building communism under the […]

One of the major "liberal" talking points concerns funding for New Orleans' levees. Just one problem:
…Indeed, if editorial writers had a comment to make it was to say something about the levees.
And why not? The levees broke, didn't they? That's what helped mess up the rescue effort, didn't it? And there were cuts in federal […]